Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Big-shot defends superdeterminism

My recent papers were greeted with scepticism. I've no problem with that. What disturbes me is the general reaction that they are "wrong". my question is summarised as follows:

Did any of these people actually read the work and can anyone tell me where a mistake was made?

Now the details. I can't help being disgusted by the "many world" interpretation, or the Bohm - deBroglie "pilot waves", and even the idea that the quantum world must be non-local is difficult to buy. I want to know what is really going on, and in order to try to get some ideas, I construct some models with various degrees of sophistication.

He believes in determinism, and even superdeterminism, but not quantum computers.

His view is in the minority.

I am inclined to agree with him about many worlds, pilot waves, locality, and quantum computers.

Much like with Godwin’s Law, “superdeterminism” strikes me as the sort of thing that you resort to after you realize you’ve lost an argument.

Look, according to superdeterminism, you’re allowed to say about any experimental result: “well, maybe that happened because of a giant universe-wide conspiracy involving both the particles you measured and the atoms of your own brain—which allowed the particles to know in advance which experiment you were going to do, and to get into just the right state, thereby fooling you into thinking that, had you chosen to do a different experiment (which is actually impossible, since you lack free will), you would’ve continued to see results consistent with standard physical theory. So it all looks like the standard physical theory is valid, but really it’s not.”

With these universe-as-magician rules, I agree that you can “explain” any conceivable scientific discovery. But precisely because of that flexibility, I’d say your victory is a hollow one, devoid of explanatory value.

Of course Aaron also supports many-worlds and quantum computers. He conceded that quantum computers have not been demonstrated, but says that the burden of proof is on the skeptics to prove that they are impossible.

Thank you. I didn't figure this out on my own. I learned this from reading Victor Stenger's writings. He explains this all in detail. If you want to understand quantum mechanics in a "nonmagical" way, he's one of the best writers.

He's one of these atheist skeptics or debunkers, who puts religion in the same category as magic and witchcraft. While I certainly don't endorse Victor Stenger on this, he's right on the money with his explanations of modern physics.

Of course, there is room for many different types of interpretations of QM, as long as it's consistent with experiment. They can all be right. Just pick the one you are most comfortable with.

Free will and causality are so thoroughly ingrained that it would take some strong evidence to convince me otherwise. I don't see any evidence at all against these concepts. I am not sure it is even possible to have an experiment that disproves free will.